You're arbitrarily assuming natural laws weren't created. To say that natural laws "just are" is to assume that they are there for no reason at all, that the universe is purposeless. See my last post above on that.

No, of necessity, in any case according to your own framework. Let's say they are created. Creation presupposes a process from something to something else. Now for creation to make any sense that process should be predicatable in some way, otehrwise one never knows what one is creating and anything can come from anything. Predictability presupposes that there is some ' way hings go' . It is not me who presupposes the eternal assistance of natural laws, it is you.

The same applies for 'reasons'. thiings have a reason when they are there to accomplish a certain something. Now one can only accomplish a certain something if it can be predicted what will cause that something to come into being. Therefore also ' reason' is only applicable against the backdrop of some natural laws.

So yes, laws are there and the question of reason is beyond us. If you want to fill it in with wild speculative metaphysics , more power to you, but why would you, if it is pointless to do so?

The OP seems to fall for the ambiguity of the term law. Human laws, the laws that govern our conduct, are created. Natural laws just are. Morover the assumption that law constrains is false. Both natural laws as well as human laws constrain and enable. A natural law, say the law of cause and effect makes our universe livable in the first place, take for instance cycle of birth. This would be impossible without cause and effect. Human law too does not only constrain. Take a traffic light. Yes, you have to stop, but because it regulates all the participants in traffic, it enables you to plan your journey and safely arrive at a destination.

I do not know if I have much to offer. Kant was against masturbation because he thought it constituted using your body as a means to an end. I am inclined to a liberal view myself and to challenge that liberal view I will try to give what is in my view the most compelling argument against masturbation.
That would be the following: in masturbation you replace a direct sexual encounter with another human being for one with yourself. In that relationship you have complete control, you expose yourself to no one and can explore every sexual fantasy you like without having to negotiate with a partner. This creates a fantasy world in which you are much more safe than in the 'other' world that sexuality is. With ' other' I mean here you expose yourself to another, a 'not you'. Now if masturbation takes the place of actually venturing out in the sexual with a partner, it might be harmful because it makes actually beginning that journey harder, you feel safe in that world you created for yourself.
So this argument is different from Kant's masturbation is not wrong because it is self indulgent, it is 'wrong' because it excludes otherness. You allow a fantasy to take the place of the real.

Logic cannot determine what is good philosophy or not, because logic is formal. It has no material concepts and philosophy typically does. It can never say anything about the validity of these concepts, it can at best trace whether the steps made in reasoning with these concepts are valid. However, that says nothing about the nature of the premises. A = A does not make a philosophy, no matter the relevance of the principle of identity.

A lot of philosophy consists of sharpening and determining your questions in order to make them better answerable. That also has to be done with your question. What are your assumptions? Apparently that there should be a way to distinguish between good and bad philosophy by way of some first principle with which you may discern the truth of philosophical statements. What you then engaging is the branch of metaphysics, or ' first philosophy'. In its absolute form, as a search from some criterion of immutable context independent truth it has been eradicated by Kant. Hence different routes to the question of ' good philosophy' have been tried, for instance the existential one taken by 180 Proof. (Nice to see you by the way!)

I myself take a historical approach and see philosophy as an elucidation of questions and concepts, opening up new ways of giving meaning to the world.

Apples and oranges.

You're comparing diseases prior to the advent of genetic engineering with those after, where viruses are created intentionally for scientific research or as a weapon, and possibly to control your population. India has a comparable sized population and geographic location with China, but most of these viruses are coming out of China.

Ohhh you are a it is a Chines complot kind of guy... It is all an attempt at population control. I should have suspected that all along... Well, I have secret information. It happened to be an Indian ploy, in order to blame the Chinese to disrupt their reputation for technology and thought, paving the way to win the race to produce the strongest chess team in the word.

Harry Hindu It seems like most people see life through a political prism, which is a shame. It's why we have threads like this pointing fingers at each other rather than China - where all this shit comes from.

That one is funny. Guys lets stop pointing fingers please, lets all point them to China. Let's castigate the Spanish for the Spanish flu and the Mexicans for the Mexican ones, lets point to the gays for aids and the Napolitans for the ubiquitous pizza hut.

Well, NOS4A2 no one likes fake news, I think all here will agree to that. What we will not agree about is what news outlets produce this fake news and what is fake or not fake. If our beloved orange leader says the turnout at his inauguration was bigger than Obama's there are scores of people willing to belief this is a report of fact, even if there are photo's to show otherwise. They can easily resort to the 'backup hypthesis that this is another democrat scam. So the question becomes who you believe. There are good arguments to believe one side over the other, but some have opted out of playing the game of 'best argument wins' and just claim that 'who I like better I will support'. This happens on both sides.

But anyway, I do see a coherent position in NOS4A2's analysis. It is actually very coherent. He, (or 'you' NOS4A2, I don't like talking about you as if you are not there, but I am also addressing other so forgive the 'he') holds a libertarian position which is generally not based on the public good but on personal liberty. Libertarians see government infringements as inherently suspect because it harms personal freedom and since we are on the world to be free and not slaves, this is an inherent wrong. That is why arguing from the common good against this position is generally pointless. It holds a different frame of reference.

However NOS4A2 seems to hold to a more strong position. also implying that citizens if left to their own devices are more capable of making informed choices than can governments who take decisions for them. The idea is based on the principle of subsidiarity, decisions at the local level need to be taken locally. The most intimate decisions such as about health are very local. In the end this principle boils down to a minimalist government indeed who's role is no more than safeguarding the individual freedom of choice, because the individual knows best. That is if this individual has full information, hence the important role for journalism and the press. They should present the public with unbiassed information so they can make optimal choices, efficiently allocate goods through the market. So far the position is perfectly coherent.

The only problem is there is a weakness in it and that is that some decisions require collective action and then decisions need to be coordinated. To give an example: when in summer European decide en masse to drive south for holiday, they have to traverse the city of Paris with its congested roads. They can travel around it but it takes longer. When it is very congested though it might be worth your while. Now in NOS4A2's libertarian world with full information the following would happen. Drivers set out and they learn that the roads in paris are severely congested. They know the roads, they know the detours and they all hear it is a mess in Paris and being the economically efficient people they are they take the detour. Lo and behold the traffic in Paris clears but the side roads get terribly clogged. they might by now all calculate and decide to turn back but they end up in just as severe mass because they all follow the same type of reasoning and all have full information.

It is not so difficult to se what good a central traffic authority regulating the flows would do in such a case. Collective action problems, like preventing a pandemic, are problems that are best coordinated on higher levels. This increases legal certainty for the citizens, make sure they do not run into different rules to which they need to adapt in several different regions, the necessary resources can be quickly allocated preventing every minute territory hoarding its supplies for itself and all kinds of other advantages of scale. I do not disagree with the principle of subsidiarity, but I do disagree with the rather absolute veneration for individual rights over collective ones. I simply do not see from whence it follows. If that falls it is easy to see that having a government taking care of collective action problems is a very sound idea.

PS that is exactly why Trump's travel ban is so silly. Next to no case in the US are traceable to Europe, but he misses out on opportunities to cooperate, choosing to harm his people in fact for political gain. If he was serious about travel restriction, as said not itself such a bad idea, restrict inter state travel and indeed keep the outbreaks in states and coordinate action together with state and central government for optimal efficiency... pragmatic policy is not that difficult...

That said of course, I do not understand why the EU is not coordinating its measures better. I disapprove of silly unilateral action without consulting your allies, but I also do not understand why measures are taken on a national level in the EU while we have a common economic market. similar travel bans will be in place very soon intra the EU and that is not necessary bad with an outbreak like this, though we should also not overescalate. A tanking economy costs lives as well. It was rather silly though letting Italy close its public life but not quantanteening nationals who came from Italy, in some cases not even testing them. We have free movement of goods and services which means the EU should be much more focused also when it comes to a crisis of movement.

Cutting international air travel is not in itself a bad idea of course. It isolates countries which makes national measure more effective. Whether this measure or any other makes sense depends on cost effectiveness. This measure seems drastic. It is also totally uncoordinated which will produce a lot of ill will against the US. Not that trump cares but in the long run this 'social capital' is something the US will need in a global economy. I do not see the measure as being very effective. Probably US nationals, even if they are feeling sick at the moment will rush to get on board of planes. It makes sense for a small country like Israel but much less for a big one like the US which will have enough national sources of contamination to cover. The virus is already in the US and needs to be effectively controlled there. Does that happen is the question?

What I find at least as interesting is that Trump's travel ban fits discursively into a strategy he employs routinely, it is the fault of the other, in this case the Europeans. It is a very effective strategy of course, because it reinforces the belief of a special nation with good, clean people under threat of a dirty perverted outside world. If only we could thrive by ourselves and develop to the fullest we cannot be stopped. Instead other countries try to weaken our spirit with hoaxes like climate change or as in some earlier statements he indicated corona. The travel ban fits in a patter on politics by emotion instead of by ratio. It is one of the key elements used by totalitarian regimes. See Karl Loewenstein's article on militant democracy, DOI: 10.2307/1948164 and no, he was by no means anti Amercan.

PS, pour mr. NoBeerNoLife another one and make it strong. It is impossible to produce more non sequiturs anyway and perhaps he will enjoy his beer in a calmly fashion. I also advocate raising his taxes just for the hell of it.

Last time I checked a judge should get the better of his emotions and display detached rationality. It is a job interview afterall. Whether or not Kavanaugh actually did something, he acted like a child, completely non justicial, rife with chatacter attacks on the woman and implicit threats. I wonder when decent republican senators will stop this outrageous freak show which is US politics right now.

I do not know how to attach a document, so here comes the story:


Eden by Night

When you miss the night bus along the E5 motorway, you have to wait for at least two hours until the next one comes. We started to walk towards the intersection. I had seen a bus stop a little further down the road. I must have miscalculated somehow, because as it turned out it was quite some walk. In fact, we didn't seem to get any closer, even though we walked towards it for quite some time.

We didn't leave the club in good spirits. The concert was disappointing and we quarrelled over some trivial remark I made about our plans for what to do for Christmas. In fact Eva and I were at that point in a relationship where every little difference in opinion could spark some sort of row. I wanted to leave the city, but Eva insisted that it was our turn to host the family this year. We have a big family and formal dinners seem to last a lifetime with them. Neither of us looked forward to making the arrangements. But Eva was probably right and we were stuck this year, much to my dismay.

The band had played for a long time. Another source of tension, because Eva had intended to leave earlier. I wanted to stay. The fact that the venue was in a remote part of the city didn't help. By daylight these parts of town do not look very inviting, but at one o'clock at night they look derelict. We ended up wandering through the deserted concrete urban wastelands of pedestrian overpasses, glaring streetlights and rolled down iron fences protecting shop windows. Not many people on the streets. That was about to change.

While walking down the road we passed a beggar. He had a grey beard and he walked strangely bent as if he was looking for something on the ground. The downtrodden man, held a plastic cup in his hand. He had a sign around his neck on which something was scrawled with a black marker: "My children go hungry", it read. Eva wanted to give him something. I didn't, because I didn't want to take out my wallet in this part of town. She gave me a look which obviously wanted to tell me that I was a jerk for being stingy, or that I was a coward for not wanting to slow down, also possible.

The beggar noticed our hesitation and started pleading with Eva and me. "Please, I haven't had something warm all day". "What is fifty cents to you?" We walked on but he kept trodding along, talking to us. His voice went from softy complaining to covertly threatening and back to complaining again. "You look like such a happy couple, you'd share a bit of that luck with the homeless", "I'm from the south you know, we from the south are nice people, we don't do anybody harm, you see". Than with an openly disapproving tone, "You guys always make yourself believe you do a lot for the poor, but than say 'hey, you can't help everyone'. Bad faith that's called, bad faith". I positioned myself between Eva and the beggar and briskly walked on.

We passed a second figure sitting beneath an overpass. He called out to us and got up. He was dressed in clothes that reminded me of the outfits worn at the turn of the century, or even before that. Beneath a long coat I saw an odd elaborate blouse and what appeared to be a sash. As my gaze travelled down, I noticed he was missing a leg from the knee down. The stump of his leg was wrapped with frayed, dirty yellowish looking bandages. Inadvertently I looked away from him. He managed to reach us very quickly though. "Been treated in a second rate hospital, can happen to everybody these days", he confided. "So, do you have something to spare for a one legged pirate?" He spoke with a gleeful sounding voice, oddly high pitched. The first man, who had been trudging along, began touching me lightly on my shoulder. I signalled to Eva to walk on, upping the pace a little.

A woman leaning against a streetlight smiled at me. "Hey handsome, Wouldn't you like to enjoy yourself for real once? I promise I won't look at the clock". You could read the signs of faded beauty on her face. She must once have been a pretty Latina girl, but now her face was crisscrossed by wrinkles and scars. "Aw, Martita, if you have him, I guess you won't be putting out for the pirate tonight", the cripple said. He had no trouble keeping up with us at all. "I'll have him you'll see", she said with a salacious grin and a tinkle in her voice. Eva glared at her, but she merely giggled in response.

Just now I noticed we were accompanied by a fourth man. A besodden drunkard, cradling a bottle of gin. "Do you have some change to spare?" "I hate sleeping on the streets you see, even the gin don't keep the cold away". I looked around me and I was surrounded by these four people. I saw Eva's face just behind the first man. She shot me a frightened glance and I tried to look back reassuringly, in which I failed. I tried to signal to her to stay there and that I would reach her, but these figures somehow managed to keep me from seeing her for more than a mere glimpse.

"Sir", a little girl's voice chirped. "Would you buy a pack of tissues from me?" The child was pulling at my coat. She was 9, 10 years old. I heard music, yes, a street musician was playing violin. The man joined us and asked for some coin so he could keep plying his trade. The bunch was crowding on me. I saw a woman with tangled hair, whom I didn't notice before. "Eva, walk on!" "I'll catch up with you" I shouted. She did, she ran. A blind man blocked my way. I had to stop or I would be tripping over his stick. "I can see you, even though I am blind", he whispered. "Want to know how"? "I could tell you, I am a fortune teller", a woman said, "for a small fee". She was a huge woman wearing a head scarf. Her breasts bulged out of the ragged dress she was wearing.

The little girl tied a little improvised bracelet around my wrist. She made it from small colourful thread. "Now you'll buy my tissues won't you?". "You're handsome", the prostitute tried to kiss my lips. I tried to push them away, finding some path out of the melee. Faces sprung up and were replaced by others, pathetic looking people, but with expectation in there eyes, mingled with something else, some sort of possessive devotion.

"What is it you want?" I asked frantically, by now ready to give up. "You want my wallet, here you go, my watch is that it?" "You can take my coat too for all I care, just leave me alone," "Take it, take it all". They started murmuring among each other and seemed excited about something. They seemed to have come to an agreement of sorts, and decided that this was their moment of triumph. Revelling in their victory they pulled me up above their heads and like a procession we continued down the road.

As we moved along I saw the street lamps and their yellow, pinkish glare. Like a limelight it shined on our procession, blinding me from time to time. I saw the ecstatic face of the whore and the content smile of the violin player. The sounds of the city seemed berserk, as if it frantically talking to itself in some metallic language. It related its dreams and its fears. With clarity I realised the incalculable number of dead it had cost to build it. For a moment I felt like I belonged among these derelicts it had produced.

The group seemed cheerful, happy with their prize. "We have it", "it is ours now", I heard them tell each other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that we passed by the bus stop. The sign normally stating the destinations seemed only to show gibberish. Not in print, but scrawled on with a black marker. "Bad Faith is the Scourge of Our Age", was the only thing I could make out among the jumble of words. A street cat meowed below it.

We proceeded past a bridge, a large one by the look of it. The procession turned towards a door placed within the fundament of the bridge. It appeared to be some sort of a shelter for these homeless people. Inside it resembled some kind of hospital though. From the look of it the hospital had been left to decay quite some time ago. The dirty floor had brown spots and looked sticky as if someone had spilled some unsavoury liquid over it. In a corner an old wheelchair was placed and a discarded pile of crutches lay by the entrance. It had that hospital smell of disinfectant, but mixed with the odour of milk gone bad. The look of the place reflected the lives of these people, a forgotten lair with ghosts as patients. A social worker was sitting behind a desk. He looked up and I recognised my religion teacher, Mr. Applewhite. I called out to him when they carried me over the threshold. "You are mistaking me for someone else Mister", he said. "Welcome anyway, we will make this your home soon". He spoke in an authoritative voice, like a psychiatrist or lawyer.

They carried me into a room where they had set up an old examination table. It had been a modern and adjustable one once, but now it just lay there, flat. They did drape that classic white paper over it though. Carefully they put me on the table.

"I want this", the blind man said and with a pencil he encircled my left eye. The one legged pirate hopped beside me and stuck a pin in my leg. To the pin he attached a little white paper with the word "leg" on it. "So soft", the prostitute was caressing my skin, "for me, for me". I couldn't move. The little girl took one of her tissues and wiped away the sweat from my forehead. "Please don't cry sir", she also said. With the look of a priest administering the sacrament, the drunk placed his bottle of gin in my hand. One by one they marked the parts they chose. While they were dividing me, the world seemed to walk away and became grey, as if I was trying to look through a heavy snow storm. It reminded me of an old T.V. of which the channels had faded and had given way to a formless scramble of white specs. The voices became muffled. I did faintly hear that the musician had picked up his violin.

The "snow" before my eyes will never entirely subside. 'Cataract', the doctors say. I do manage to find my way out of the shelter every day. I succeed even with my bad leg. Of course I drink too much again, so I am not a pretty sight. When I saw Eva last week she didn't recognise me and didn't even bother to give me the Euro I asked for. I need that Euro. It just pays for my stay. Mr. Whitechapel will not let me in otherwise. I will have to lay in the cold, inside the bus stop. A meowing cat will keep me company and I'll see the night bus pass by.

(this is by the way, copy righted material)

I have published stories on Benkei's site and some others, (hi by the way Benk!) but I do not think they can be found anymore. For anyone interested I have them of course. My claim to fame is to have won the short story contest on PF once. Other than that I wrote articles in scientific publications. The most interesting one from a philosophical perspective is called 'precautionary logic and a policy of moderation' and is freely accessible.

"It is because (this sort of?) sex is inherently violating, objectifying, manipulating. Consider: it is usually the man who asks for consent of the woman (to do things to her body, to use her body as a mean for his own climax, to satisfy some urge that is inherently questionable)."

Hmmm, I agree with quite a bit of what you say, but you also jump to conclusions and miss a lot of nuance. The issue of consent is actually quite simple. We ask for consent because it takes two to tango. The rules of sex are that it is intercourse with consent of both parties. If it is without consent it would be rape. Rape is a kind of sex frowned upon because sex against the will of one party is a very painful humiliating and unpleasant affair for one of the parties. So basically we require consent. I do not think it has anything to do with teh capitalust system. Sex is not 'inherently wrong', sex without consent is inherently wrong, much the same as violence is inerently wrong.

During the sex act you indeed use the other person for your pleasure, I agree with that. However the beauty of it is that the other uses you for that very same purpose. It is the mutual objectification that makes it moral. If objectification is merely one sided, yes than you have a point, but it is not. The point of it is, at least for me, that the other consents to the defilement, the base urges and what have you, but also has the right to use you in likewise manner.... and you even like it when he/she does... So yes, sex is most intimately bound up with consent, because otherwise the objectfication is just base and nother else than structural dominance in the worst form.

Is there anything wrong with rewarding people for what they accomplished purely or almost purely by luck? — czahar

An award is given for something, an achievement. In achieving something, always somewhere down the line there is a luck factor involved, if only the abscence of bad luck. A nobel price winning scientists probably would never have won a nobel prize if his train was late during his very first job application for instance. If luck cannot be a factor in giving awards than we probably should abolish the institution of awards, something we can choose to do. On the other hand not accepting an award because it is based on luck is incoherent. Since luck plays a part in any general award it is no reason for rejecting that specific award, unless the disclaimer is made that all awards are rejected.

In fact contrary to pseudonym's line, I would take Cuthbert's line, but even radicalise it. We have a duty to accept the award, because universilising the maxim "awards should not be accepted when there is an element of luck involved" leads to a contraditction: there is always an element of luck involved so the whole institution of awards is eradicated. Now we could argue whether that is a good idea. A second Kantian question would be: can we will to live in a world without the institution of awards? We can but it would make the world a more barren place. Do we want that? Since the insitution of awards exists from time immemorial and seemingly in every society I argue we have an imperfect duty to accept awards at least some of the time. The mother did not live up to duty, despite her intentions.

Thanks Tiff, really great to see you too! Nice to be here!